launch of the movie, Gandhi, My Father, Monte Casino, Johannesburg
29 July 2007
Programme director
Members of the Gandhi Family
Ministers and deputy ministers
The business community
Anil Kapoor, Co-producer
Feroz Abbas Khan, Director of the movie
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
I thank you very much for inviting me to this important event, the launch of
the film, 'Gandhi my Father.'
Launching this film in South Africa is no coincidence, since Gandhi spent
many years in South Africa, from 1893 to 1914, a period during which he used
his extraordinary energies to fight racism.
I think we will agree that the launch of this kind of movie, focusing on one
of the greatest opponents of colonialism and racism, is long overdue.
We welcome this movie because I trust it can only reactivate our collective
memory and deepen our understanding of the great sacrifices of this gigantic
human being.
Indeed, Gandhi became a greater human being as he struggled personally,
socially and politically, but always putting his principles and the quest for
human dignity above everything else.
It is through this movie that for the first time many of us will have a peek
into the family trial and tribulations of this noble human being who indeed
became a citizen of the world.
I believe the movie 'Gandhi my Father,' traces the life of Gandhi's son, who
was deprived of the normal relationship with his father because of the burden
of freedom his father carried on his shoulders.
It is a burden Gandhi knew, from the beginning, would sever him from
humanity's most cherished institution, the family.
The pathos that flows from the disjuncture between father and son can only
move us as we, in a way, share in the causes of this sad chapter in the
glorious life of Gandhi.
We share in this heart-rending saga between Gandhi and his son and family,
for it was for our total freedom from the crime of racial oppression that
Gandhi dedicated his life.
A true and brave defender of the fundamental values of human dignity, Gandhi
carried deep inside the recesses of his soul, the pain of sacrificing his
fatherly obligations on the alter of human freedom.
Yet, this he did in the full knowledge that the universal cause of the human
family, living in harmony and bound by the ties of love, tolerance, brotherhood
and sisterhood, would more than make up for his personal losses as an
individual.
We now have the benefit of history to appreciate the gift that Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi was to humanity. We now know that the greatness of his soul
was not limited only to people of Indian descent who called him 'Mahatma', but
to the human race as a whole.
Indeed, Gandhi's life remains an extraordinary source of inspiration and
hope from which the world would do well to draw some lessons to reinforce the
hope for peace, justice and equality.
From his life, we learn that the quest for human freedom knows no bounds, or
geographical boundaries. Gandhi was the pioneer of Satyagraha, the resistance
of tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total
non-violence which led India to independence and inspired movements for civil
rights and freedom across the world.
In his lifetime, he taught us the important lesson that fighting oppression
is a human duty that must follow us wherever we go and wherever we are.
Determined to see through these ideals, Gandhi forfeited the comforts of the
life of a family man.
As if by the accident of history, Ghandi came to our land, South Africa, in
1893 for an assignment purely related to his legal profession. In hindsight, it
turned out that Gandhi could not have sojourned to a more appropriate human
society for the teaching and spreading of his philosophy.
Driven by the sublime conviction that fighting oppression is a human duty
that must follow us wherever we go and wherever we are, Gandhi's conscience was
troubled by the helplessness of his downtrodden people. Instead of resigning to
the comfort associated with those in his class of the learned, he however chose
struggle over privilege.
Instead of seeking refuge in what some may have found excusable for a
sojourner to avoid meddling in the political affairs of a host country,
Gandhi's humanity impelled him consciously to play a leading role in the
defence of the powerless.
He prolonged what should have been a year of professional legal practice in
South Africa to more than a decade of toil and persecution. He joined the
people in their daily humiliation and subjugation by the white rulers of the
day and inspired future freedom struggles in South Africa and beyond.
For his defence of human rights and pursuit of human dignity, Gandhi bore
the brunt of the repression of the then racist regime of South Africa, as it
was the predetermined fate of all who dared to challenge the status quo.
Yet, even in the loneliness of his prison cell, Gandhi continued to pray for
the redemption of his jailers, so that, eventually, they too could see the
light; so that, finally, they could overcome the malady of racism afflicting
their state of being.
He wished his persecutors could be lifted from the unconscious trappings of
evil in order for them to enjoy the contentment that goes with a fuller
understanding of what it means to be human.
While languishing in prison, Gandhi did something that only a true human
being could do. He prepared a pair of sandals to be handed as a gift to General
Jan Smuts, a South African military man who was then a leading representative
of oppression and white supremacist ideas.
How many of us today still aspire to see our enemies as people to whom we can
extend a gift? How many of us today can prepare a pair of sandals as a gift to
those who wish for our humiliation? How many believers in the world today are
still striving to live up to the religious teaching that 'we should pray for
our enemies'?
It is this indomitable spirit and demonstrable commitment to peace that
continue to expose the hollowness of those who have sought to discredit
Gandhi's passive resistance and non-violence campaign as mere philosophical
sentimentalism. Not only did he preach non-violence in peace and tranquil
times, he was ready to and, indeed, did teach soldiers and police forces
wielding guns that they, too, were part of the human family.
In South Africa and subsequently in his mother land, India, the people did
not call Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi "the man of great soul" for nothing. He
suffered with the people; he toiled with the people; ate and lived with the
people; and struggled with and for the ordinary people.
Despite having acquired some of his education in England, something then
considered a rare and prestigious achievement, he chose practically to be part
of the daily travails and wretchedness that defined the collective fate of his
people.
Even in the gun-frenzied atmosphere that accompanied the two World Wars,
Gandhi relentlessly hoisted the flag of peace for the rest of the globe to see.
It is his unflinching belief in world peace that led him to declare that the
world needs a "federation of friendly interdependent states".
Indeed, Gandhi's influence lived and continues to extend long after he
departed from the world of the living. The great African-American leader of the
civil rights movement in the United States of America, Dr Martin Luther King
Jr., acknowledged the influence that Gandhi's philosophy of passive resistance
had on his own struggle against racism in America in the 1960s.
Without doubt, Mahatma Gandhi belonged to a special category of human beings
described by Bertrand Russell when he says:
"In politics, they do not spend time and passion defending unjust privileges of
their class or nation, but they aim at making the world as a whole happier,
less cruel, less full of conflict between rival greed, and more full of human
beings whose growth has not been dwarfed and stunted by oppression." (Noam
Chomsky's Problems of Knowledge and freedom)
Chairperson, you will agree with me that Gandhi's life is a true story of an
extraordinary human being whose life has been fruitful to all of us. Yet,
Gandhi's personal life, philosophy, and intellectual persuasions should be
further known to all the people of the world.
It is for this reason I trust that the film we are launching here is more
than an average action-filled Hollywood movie. This is, and indeed must be, a
movie that should help us delve deeper into the annals of history that sharpen
our collective and individual sense of the true fulfilment of the human
spirit.
I am certain the lessons to be drawn from this film will make us realise
just how much Gandhi sacrificed during his lifetime and how much we owe it to
this history to try and build a better world.
This must be a movie that impels its viewers to reconnect with their
humanity; a movie that opens up a collective window of opportunity for the
human race to grasp the possibility of a better world.
I wish this film every success and hope that the message it carries shall
reach all corners of the world.
Thank you.
Issued by: The Presidency
29 July 2007
Source: The Presidency (http://thepresidency.gov.za)
